The Princeling
by annafan
Summary: What if Faramir had still been unconscious when Eowyn went to look for the ruler of the city to ask permission to follow the host to the Black Gate? An AU re-imagining of the Houses of Healing/ Steward and King chapters in which everything unfolds rather differently.


_**The Princeling**_

_Bugger my cursed pride._ Éowyn sat down heavily on the edge of the narrow bed. _What was I thinking of? Now I don't have a blessed clue what's going on._

She'd done it, she realised, for a mixture of reasons. Part of it was pride: _I learned the language at my mother's knee – I should be able to converse._ Part of it had been a misplaced diplomatic urge. _With Éomer away... don't let me dwell on where, oh gods, keep me from thinking of that... I am the representative of the Riddermark. I need to show them that we are a civilised nation._ And part of it had been a wish to attain a certain gravitas, partly with a view to getting her plea taken seriously. _If I speak Westron, they will hear my Eorling accent and think I am a barbarian, uncivilised, stupid even._

_Learned at my mother's knee. _Aye, there was the rub. Learned – in the sense of knowing the words for "doll", and "pretty ribbons", and "horsey", and the occasional more complicated sentence such as "Éomer broke my toy sword so I bit him."More grown-up vocabulary was a bit of a problem, grammar more of a problem, gender (which her own language did not have) an almost insoluble problem, and as for the complex inflections which conveyed the nuances of social position and hierarchy – well that was simply disastrous.

So Éowyn had gone to see the warden, had attempted to converse with him in her rudimentary Sindarin, had demanded an audience with the current de facto ruler of the Citadel, and had achieved her aim: the audience was later this afternoon. And now she hadn't a clue who it was she was going to meet.

She tried to go through the possibilities. At one point, Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth had been in charge: that much she was certain of. But it seemed he had gone to the Black Gate, to fight alongside Éomer and Aragorn. There had been something confusing about the older steward and the younger steward, and one of them was ill, lying feverish and unconscious. It really made no sense. She thought that one of Imrahil's sons was perhaps left in charge – she hadn't been sure about the ending of the word – princeling perhaps? Some sort of diminutive, perhaps. Maybe it was the youngest. He had been hovering in the background when Éomer came to bid her farewell. A handsome, slightly rakish young man, dark hair tied back in a careless braid, aquiline nose, grey eyes, a bearing which suggested he thought a lot of himself. With good reason, from what Éomer had told her of the battle. But she wasn't going to make a fool of herself over a pretty face yet again.

She'd tried to clarify the situation, asking if the "prince" was "young", only to have the Warden look at her in amused surprise and repeat the diminutive "princeling". Oh well, she supposed she would soon find out who she needed to persuade to lend her a horse, armour and a sword.

~o~O~o~

It was all Éowyn could do not to laugh. "Princeling!" The woman before her was tall – almost as tall as Éowyn herself – and elegant, beautiful even. She wore a dark blue overdress above a fine lawn blouse, with a sword within a jewelled scabbard hanging from the belt around her waist. Éowyn's eyes flicked to the hilt of the sword. Bound with leather which bore the polished, worn indentations of fingers – this was no piece of idle display but a weapon well and regularly used.

She looked up at the woman's face to see the mirror of her brother and father's faces: the same hawk-like nose and grey eyes, albeit with (she thought) a keener intelligence than the young man. A delicate, slightly pointed chin, with a finely delineated jaw. No beard, of course. (Why on earth had she even had that ridiculous thought? Éowyn felt like pinching herself at the strange way her mind was meandering – she put it down to being entirely flummoxed by the discovery that the "princeling" was a princess). As her own mind whirred like a child's top spinning out of control, the intelligent grey eyes looked at her levelly, with a regard which seemed to assess, interrogate and regard with compassion all at once. It was an altogether quite unnerving experience.

When, some half an hour or so later, Éowyn finally escaped from her encounter with the Princess, she returned to her room feeling quite drained. It was not just the physical strain of the encounter (though her arm had begun to throb painfully half way through), but the emotional effort of defending what she now realised to be an entirely unreasonable position, and the intellectual effort of trying to construct arguments to shore up that defence in the face of what she realised was an overwhelmingly superior opposing force.

Gently – annoyingly gently – the other woman had pointed out to her the futility of seeking to ride out after the host. Even were it not for her broken arm (which made the undertaking absurd), they were already so far away as to make catching them a hopeless endeavour. Sadly, Éowyn was forced to admit her folly, and the only concession she had wrung out of the Gondorian was a window that faced East.

And she'd paid a price to obtain even this meagre concession. The Princess, as she now knew her to be, had made her promise to share her midday meal and afterwards take a short turn around the gardens each day.

~o~O~o~

Lothíriel sat in her characteristic pose, legs twined round one another almost like a corkscrew, hands tightly clasping her elbows. Every so often, one of her hands would fly from its resting place, make an expansive gesture to underline whatever it was she was saying at the time, then return to its original position, tightly coiled and ready for the next dramatic moment in the discourse.

If she had had to describe the princess to a third party, Éowyn was sure she would have reached diplomatically for the word "slender" to capture the other woman's physique, but in truth the word which more naturally popped into her head was "angular." Not that it mattered. It struck her that "slender" was the word one would use to underline another woman's marriageability – one could, after all, be slender and yet still have the sort of curves that (if her recollections of soldiers' banter was anything to go by) men found attractive. But as far as Éowyn was concerned, "angular" was more interesting: somehow it betokened strength, and an uncompromising individuality. Not only that: it seemed to match her spiky, ferocious, deeply articulate intelligence.

And Lothíriel was ferociously intelligent. She often appeared at their lunchtime meetings with a book tucked under her arm, and Éowyn had, within a few days, ceased to be amazed by the breadth of things that captured Lothíriel's interest: statecraft (naturally), military tactics, poetry in ancient Elvish languages, the construction and more importantly breaking of ciphers for sending secret messages, even the geometrical basis of ballistics. What was more impressive was that the woman from the sea could often summarise the contents in a way that Éowyn could follow – she had a knack for an apt metaphor, a telling analogy. Though (and Éowyn found that she was warmed by a quiet pride at the thought of this) when she had hesitantly complimented the princess on this ability, Lothíriel had responded by saying that it was easy to come up with an explanation when one's audience was intelligent and quick on the uptake.

But she was also a woman of deep emotions – whether talking with yearning of the towering windswept cliffs and crashing waves of the Dol Amroth coast, or with anxiety of the progress (or lack of it) of her beloved cousin, Faramir. She had spent many hours beside his bed, trying to make light of her dedication by claiming that she only did it so that Faramir's wife, Linneth, could snatch a few hours' sleep.

"For otherwise, she would not sleep at all, and she is near exhaustion with the effort of it all – and all that with a toddler tugging at her skirts, and another on the way."

But today, the tightly coiled figure was topped by a face which bore a radiant smile.

"It is as the Lord Aragorn said: having been roused from his coma, what we have seen these last few days has been in fact a natural, healing sleep as his body recovers from the ravages of the black breath. And he is very much himself – tired, obviously, but just as sharp in mind, and as thoughtful and quietly wise as ever."

Lothíriel's joy was infectious. Éowyn felt the corners of her mouth turn upwards in an answering smile.

~o~O~o~

Lothiriel's description was so vivid: a vast green wave, rising out of the sea as it approached the shore, smooth, menacing, surging in inexorably. Then washing over the whole city – palaces and houses alike, temples, courts, libraries. The city was completely submerged, lost forever beneath the deep grey-green sea.

"Those of my family who have the sight – we all of us have this dream from time to time. And that is what these gathering black clouds makes me think of. That great wave sweeping all before it, destroying the world. I fear we face darkness inescapable."

Lothíriel shivered as she looked out over the darkened plain. For the first time since meeting her, Éowyn sensed a vulnerability hiding beneath the tempered steel strength.

"Surely you don't really think the darkness is inescapable?" Éowyn said. All at once, a strange whimsy came upon her: Lothíriel was a couple of fingers' breadths smaller than Éowyn, and the taller woman was struck by a sudden, unexpected surge of protectiveness. Without thinking, Éowyn cast her arm about Lothíriel's shoulders and drew her tight against her.

"Lothíriel, I do not think that any darkness can endure," she whispered. "My very dear friend." With these words she pressed a gentle, sisterly kiss upon the other's brow.

And at that moment, the clouds parted, and an eagle flew down from the sunlit sky above, crying, "Rejoice, all ye citizens of Minas Tirith. The dark tower has fallen and the shadow is departed."

~o~O~o~

Éowyn awoke from a fitful sleep. The bedclothes were tangled round her legs. For a moment or two she lay there, consumed by a sense that the world had been turned completely upside down, that reality was out of kilter. Then, a fragment at a time, the dream came back to her. She had been standing on the walls, looking over the parapet.

"The view is so beautiful." Lothíriel's low, melodic voice had come from behind her.

"It is... I miss the swaying grass as far as the eye can see, but Gondor and this view of the mountains... it is beautiful too."

She had sensed, rather than heard, Lothíriel's approach. Suddenly, arms had enfolded her waist, and the Gondorian had tucked her chin over Éowyn's shoulder. Thoughts had tumbled through Éowyn's mind, one after another, in quick succession, too quickly to make any sense at all. _But I am a woman... she is a woman... Her arms are so nice, so comforting... Could I, should I... feel desire for another woman?_ And instantly, the warm urgent need in her belly had answered that question, and the voice in her head had said _All will be well. All will work just as it should..._ And before she could even make sense of this, Lothíriel's voice had murmured in her ear.

"It was the nearer view I meant. The view that is so very beautiful." And Lothíriel, standing on tiptoe, pressed her cheek against Éowyn's. Then, turning very slightly, soft lips had brushed against her skin, lingering just longer than the kiss of a friend, even a very dear friend.

Éowyn disentangled her legs from the sheets, and sat up. Her mind struggled to make sense of the dream. Just the remnants of her malady, a fevered concoction of the imagination. But some traitorous part of her mind whispered, _Dreams can sometimes show us the desires our waking minds are afraid to admit._

~o~O~o~

Éowyn made her way into the garden with more than a little trepidation. How would she react to meeting Lothíriel? What if she was consumed with embarrassment? What if the strange feelings stirred by the dream persisted into her waking hours? What if Lothíriel somehow sensed the source of her embarrassment?

But she need not have worried. Lothíriel rushed up to her, a whirlwind of activity and determination.

"We have much more exciting business to attend to than having lunch here," she announced, eyes glowing with excitement. "We must meet with Lord Hurin. He is the highest justice in the land, barring the Steward and (I suppose, when he eventually returns from Cormallen) the King. You and I are to be witnesses at a marriage!"

"A marriage? Whose?"

"My cousin's."

"Faramir? But he is already married." Éowyn could not hide her astonishment.

"Ah, but you see his father hated the idea of Faramir 'throwing his lineage away' on the widow of one of his comrades, a woman outside the ranks of the highest nobility. So he insisted upon a morganatic marriage only. But Lord Hurin has consulted the case law in the archives, and today we shall set aside the petty restrictions Lord Denethor insisted upon, and not only will their marriage be recognised in law, but the legitimacy of their offspring. And we shall get it all done and dusted before Linneth is brought to bed of their next child – after all, the babe may turn out to be a boy and thus in the line of inheritance."

And so any embarrassment melted away in the face of Lothíriel's unalloyed happiness, bolstered by the prospect of activity and,crucially, the company of others.

Over the days that followed, however, Éowyn found her mind returning over and over to the dream. Sometimes it seemed to her that it was simply a strange fevered fancy, and she relaxed back into her easy friendship with Lothíriel. But at other times she would find herself looking sidelong at her new found friend and wondering – wondering whether a woman's body could stir one to desire as a man's body could.

For she knew of desire towards men, even though, protected as she was by male relatives, she had never acted on that desire. But the sight of two men, stripped to the waist, sparring in the practice ring, muscles beneath skin, broad shoulders, movement and tension and action – that sight definitely warmed her body, caused her blood to run with more fire. And the Lord Aragorn – she could not deny that she had felt desire for him. High and lordly, a fierce and deadly warrior, but with a nobility and fairness of purpose: she could not have conjured a better figure had she drawn one from the fairy tales of her childhood. And overlying this, a manliness, a physical attractiveness which stirred her. Surely, feeling as she did, she could not at the same time be drawn to the softness, the delicacy of a female form, in the way that men were?

Furthermore, she was all too painfully aware of the reverse of the coin – the threat that male desire could pose to her. Had she not heard Wormtongue's dark whisperings, his threats, his fantasies? Not just overheard – he had made sure that she heard, or rather, half-heard, always when they were alone, always in circumstances when his words could easily be denied should she be foolish enough to challenge them. But also always with enough malice as to leave her in no doubt as to what would befall her should the King and her brother no longer be there to protect her. Perhaps that was what was behind the peculiar dream – a diversion, a channelling of her desires in a safe direction.

But no sooner would she have convinced herself that this was the case than a gesture, a look, a shared jest would leave her awash with affection for her companion. And yet... was it not natural, sisterly, entirely in keeping with the normal order of things, to feel affection for one's friends? But as fast as she reached for this reassuring way of framing the question, some rebellious part of mind supplied another: was it normal to spend so much time studying one's friend's appearance?

Her spiky posture still fascinated Éowyn, as did her thick dark hair. And her ears – Éowyn could have written a treatise about her ears. It was rumoured that the princes and princesses of Dol Amroth (_And Princelings, _Éowyn thought wryly) had Elven ancestry. And certainly there was something unusual about Lothíriel's ears. Not the obvious: they were quite rounded, without so much as a hint of a point. But they were also curiously flat, without the elaborate folds and scroll work so typical of human ears.

And so Éowyn's mood flitted to and fro, like the clouds which blew across the high peak behind the Citadel. One moment she would be convinced that she felt nothing more than close friendship, the next that her fascination with the woman from Dol Amroth went far beyond what was natural, or indeed permissible, to feel for another woman. Nor was she even sure how to classify this strange fascination. She was aware that men sometimes took their pleasure with each other – either through circumstance, on long campaigns without female company, or through preference (a preference which was tolerated in the Mark and frowned upon in Gondor). But she had never really heard tell of women who felt that way. After all (here she blushed at the thought), according to her brother's account – for he took great delight in shocking her with the details – men used their rear passage in place of a woman's passage... But there was still a cock going somewhere, and she presumed they could take turn and turn about and both get their pleasure that way. But how would two women manage? Two passages and no cocks? Clearly she was making a big to do about nothing much, and if only for simple reasons of the arrangements of bodily parts, there could be no more to what she felt than friendship.

She had just about succeeded in convincing herself of this when she had the second dream.

Where the first had ended with a chaste brush of lips against a cheek, this began with a heated press of lips against lips, and spiralled from there. Soft fingers against even softer skin. The scent of jasmine and hibiscus in that glorious cloud of dark hair, unbound and running like water over her hands. Fingers questing beneath silk into forbidden places. The swell of a breast, soft and pliant beneath a palm. The contrast of skin, pale like ivory and so smooth, or the deep pink of dusky rose petals, yet tantalisingly puckered, rough beneath the touch. The gasp of breath as fingertips then lips and tongue explored the contrast. The sigh of satin slipping to the floor. Musky smells, slick moistness, smooth fingers, just the right amount of friction. An intimacy of knowing exactly where to touch because the body she touched was the mirror of her own, of knowing exactly what the response would be. And of knowing the delight of being touched... The overwhelming fire that scorched, leaving mind and body sparkling and fragmenting...

Éowyn awoke, her breath coming in ragged gasps, blood throbbing in her veins and rushing in her ears, the delirious aftermath leaving her in no doubt that her body had responded every bit as much as her mind to the images her subconscious had conjured. _Oh mercy, it is only a matter of hours before I have to face her. _

~o~O~o~

With feet like lead, Éowyn approached the garden.

"Let us take tea together tomorrow morning," Lothíriel had said yesterday. But yesterday was a million ages past, ages before the dream. How could Éowyn look her friend in the face without a flush of her cheeks bearing witness to her hidden thoughts? But when she rounded the box hedge and came upon Lothíriel, sitting on the bench beside the low stone table, all fears vanished. Her friend looked up at her with an open, guileless smile, and Éowyn's fears fled like dew beneath the morning sun, replaced simply by happiness to be in her company.

The servant had laid an excellent meal – tea, drop scones, saffron cake, fruit. The two women sat in companionable silence and ate, then, having eaten their fill, fell to talking of anything and everything, from deep matters of state to trivial nonsense, such as whether coal black horses had a character as black as their pelt.

"You know, I had the strangest dream last night."

Éowyn's hand flew to her mouth. Had she uttered the sentence she feared most? Then she realised with a start that the words had fallen from Lothíriel's lips, not her own. But Lothíriel seemed not to notice, and continued, her voice light-hearted.

"You know how it is with a new admirer. They invite you for a walk, in the garden, or in the park, one's chaperone following at a discreet but safe distance. And they offer you their arm, and there is this awkward moment where the two of you try to learn how to match the length of your steps one to another..."

Éowyn looked at Lothíriel, feeling completely nonplussed by the conversation, but a little relieved that it was Lothíriel's strange, though fortunately inconsequential dream they were talking about.

"Except that in this dream, the would be beau who offered me the crook of their arm was you! Was that not strange beyond imagining?" Lothíriel gave a tinkling laugh, but the smile did not reach her eyes. Her grey eyes, filled with keen intelligence, met Éowyn's with a steady, questioning gaze, a gaze which was almost a challenge.

And for the first time in her life, Éowyn ducked the challenge. She conjured up a laugh, which even to her own ears sounded false.

"Oh, what a strange fancy. I find that the images my mind conjures are often of the strangest fancies, bearing no resemblance to the real world. It seems that yours are the same."

For a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of pain and sadness cross Lothíriel's face. Then, legs twining into their customary cork-screw, Lothíriel also laughed, a laugh which Éowyn recognised as every bit as forced as her own had been.

"Quite! After all – two maids. How ridiculous."

~o~O~o~

Éowyn spent the next few days cursing herself. Whatever the rights and wrongs of her desires, it seemed that Lothíriel shared them and, in an act of supreme courage, had offered Éowyn an opening to pay her court. And in an act of supreme cowardice, Éowyn had pretended not to notice. And now Lothíriel, presumably feeling both rejected and embarrassed, was avoiding her. She had not been to the houses for the past four days.

Éowyn felt herself getting gradually more and more dejected.

"You do not take your midday meal with my cousin any more?" Faramir's voice interrupted her reverie.

"No, I think she is too busy with the running of the city."

"Ah, we invalids are not the best of company," said Faramir, with his gentle smile. The same gentle smile as his cousin, Éowyn reflected. _But how I miss her spikiness, her fire, her wit, her... everything..._

She took refuge in banter. "Just as well that Linneth does not think that..."

At this, Faramir gave her a sharp look. Éowyn had a horrible feeling that he had read more parallels into her words than she had intended to reveal to him. He continued to look at her more thoughtfully, then looked down at his fingernails, ragged and uneven after a lifetime of soldiering. His voice was quiet. "I think I shall ask the warden to remind my cousin that part of the duty of a ruler is keeping morale up..."

~o~O~o~

That soft melodious voice. Oh, how she had missed it.

"Why do you tarry here, Éowyn, and not go to join your brother in Cormallen?"

Éowyn turned, feeling as though her heart was so full of happiness it was about to take flight. Half choking, she managed to say, "Do you not know?"

"I have two answers – the one I fear, and the one I hope for. My fear is that you stay simply to avoid the Lord Aragorn. My hope..." Lothíriel stopped, for once appearing hesitant and uncertain.

"You hope..." Éowyn took a couple of steps towards her, looking at her expectantly. Lothíriel's face bore a hesitant half-smile. "You hope perhaps that I stay for you?"

"Yes." The word was barely a whisper, but the half-smile transformed into a look of radiant joy.

And somehow no further words were needed. A few strides, and they met in the centre of the garden. Arms round each other, they embraced, and Éowyn found that they did indeed fit together as if they had been made for one another, their lips moulded to fit against the others. There was a soft gentleness in that first embrace, and yet implicit within the gentleness the promise of passion. And above all, a sense of homecoming, of being surrounded by a profound love, a love which would endure.


End file.
